


Crowley's Problematic Eyes

by scottsalem



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Color Blindness, Crowley (Good Omens) Is Not Crowley (Supernatural), Disabled Character, Disabled Crowley (Good Omens), Domestic Fluff, Eye Trauma, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hurt Crowley, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Rainbows, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-07-25 22:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scottsalem/pseuds/scottsalem
Summary: Crowley's eyes are more similar to a snake's than a human's, which presents a unique set of challenges when tasked with living a human life. He tends to just avoid the issue, but sometimes that's a bit harder than it would seem. Aziraphale tries to account for his needs wherever possible, but it's hard to when he doesn't even know what they are.Also known as: I did way too much research on snake eyes and Crowley has light sensitivity, red/green color blindness, blurry vision, and a hard time focusing on details.





	1. Chapter 1

As a general rule of thumb, demons and angels have a loose relationship with the laws of reality, meaning they can change their physical forms with the same ease as a snake might shed its skin as it grows.

Following that line of thinking, there are several things- such as muscles and eyes- that a snake does not shed, nor would it choose to if given the option. 

This analogy is almost entirely accurate to how angels’ and demons’ physical forms operate. Though they may change their appearance how they please, there are always one or two unchangeable constants, reminders of their true form within. 

For Aziraphale, it was a sort of light fluffy quality to him, making even his most muscular and dark skinned forms have an essence of being made from marshmallows. He also always managed to look like a helpful primary school teacher, the kind who stayed after to give special and patient attention to struggling pupils over a nice cup of tea and some biscuits.

Crowley’s physical constants were a bit less abstract. Being a demon, his identity was naturally tied to an animal form that he adopted after the fall, which gave him several advantages when it came to going unnoticed amongst all of the snakes back in the garden. In modern times, however, when being a rather large snake in the middle of London was considered socially unacceptable at best, it raised some minor problems concerning his defining features.

Admittedly, having a tendency towards serpentine movements wasn’t too strange, it even made him seem more appealing at times. And hissing his words was more of an embarrassing speech impediment than anything else. It was the eyes that were the most troublesome. 

The reason being the rather simple fact that Crowley’s eyes not only looked like those of a snake, they _ were, _ in a sense. They certainly functioned like them, which in a world where vision was becoming more and more relied upon, was a terrible nuisance.

He had only told Aziraphale of his many vision problems in small bits, and only as they became relevant. 

The whole “rain-bow” business was rather lovely, he’d said offhandedly at its release, though he couldn’t quite see the big fuss what with it being all of the same blues, yellows, and browns you saw everywhere else but in the sky this time. He had then been enlightened to his colorblindness by an extremely saddened and pity stricken angel, who had secretly vowed to from that point on appear only in shades that were visible to unfortunate souls such as Crowley who would not be able to appreciate a wider spectrum of wardrobe colors.

Many people commented on Crowley’s character with the basis of wearing sunglasses when he didn’t need them. Aziraphale had never questioned them, being only partially incorrect in his assumption that he wore them as an accessory to better blend in with human society. 

He discovered the error in his ways on one sunny afternoon stroll through the park a few years before the apocalypse. A leaf had fallen into the demon’s lovely hair, and when he reached up to pluck it out, Crowley jumped and his precious sunglasses fell off.

“Ah, shit!” A protective hand flew up over his eyes as he swore. “What was that about?”

“Terribly sorry my dear boy, you just had a leaf in your hair, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Aziraphale quickly removed the offending bit of plant life and stooped to retrieve the glasses where they’d landed on the pavement. When he turned around, the demon was still covering his eyes with one hand, the other one outstretched to receive them. He fiddled with them nervously.

“You know, there’s no one around to see if you… didn’t wear them.” 

The outstretched hand lowered slightly.

“Why would I do that?”

“Well… I think your eyes are rather lovely, if you don’t mind my saying so. They’re quite striking.”

The hand dropped for a moment in resignation but then resumed its expectant position.

“I _ need them _,” Crowley said.

“No you don’t, it’s just me-”

“No, angel, you don’t understand- _ I. Need. Them _.”

His tone was insistent, which puzzled Aziraphale.

“Whatever for?”

Crowley’s head drooped a bit, and he sighed, gritting his teeth.

“They help me... my eyes, I’m- it’s too bright. Hurts.”

“Oh, darling, I- oh, I’m so sorry, I’ll-” Aziraphale gazed at him sadly, stepping forward and gently reaching out and taking Crowley’s wrist. The demon tensed, and the hand pressed stubbornly tighter into his face.

“It’s alright, just close your eyes, love.” 

Tentatively, the demon allowed his hand to be peeled from his face, eyes screwed shut as his shades were returned with swift grace to their proper place. He slowly blinked, looking down at the angel with a sudden awareness of how close they were standing. And that Aziraphale was pouting at him like he was a sick puppy.

“Oh, don’t give me that look.”

Just because he happened to be more- receptive to the ultraviolet spectrum than most didn’t mean he was any less a demon, and demons did not need coddling.

Aziraphale had always known that Crowley didn’t read, but he’d assumed that it was just because he didn’t like it, or preferred television and theater. Which was, again, only partially true.

It had been nearly a month since the Not-Pocalypse, and they’d been making up for lost time being honest about the nature of their relationship quite nicely. It was around ten in the evening, and they were at the bookshop, enjoying each other’s company as they did their own things. When you spend that much time together, you eventually get to a point where you don’t need to fill every silence.

Well, for the most part.

Crowley threw his head back against the arm of the couch and groaned in frustration.

“Angellllll! I’m booorrreeeddd! You’ve got nothing for me to do here when you’re ignoring me like this!”

Aziraphale looked up from his book with a fond scowl.

“That’s not true, there’s plenty to do here,” he said.

“Like what? Books? Hah-” the demon shook his head, apparently amused at the thought.

“Well, why not?” The angel chided, trying to recover his place on the page. “You might rather enjoy some of the Victorian Goths, they’re around the corner by the Cryptid Mythos and Body Horror sections.”

His book blocked the scathing look that was aimed at him, but after a moment Crowley groaned again and slouched out of the room towards the Horror section. It apparently took him a good little while to select a book, and he sauntered back into the room after several minutes with a large green hardcover novel.[*](https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/47438509#work_endnotes)

“What’ve you picked then?”

Crowley plopped down on the couch and gestured vaguely with the book.

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Figured I’d go with something I’d heard of.”

Aziraphale smiled at him with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Excellent choice! It’s quite a compelling narrative.”

He reached for his tea, only to discover he hadn’t made any. How silly of him.

“I’ll be right back dear, I’m going to make myself some tea. Anything for you?”

The demon shook his head fondly, those golden eyes lovely in the dim firelight.

“Alright, well don’t wait up. Back in a jiff!”

Crowley chuckled as his angel bustled from the room. _ Back in a jiff. _Still not the silliest thing he’d said, but it was up there.

He turned his attention warily towards the menacing reading material in his hand. The letters on the side of the brown binding he’d been able to read well enough, but the text inside was going to take some effort. He opened it up to the first page, tracing the words with his finger when he found his vision swimming too much to hold his place.

It was hard work what with the words not keeping still no matter how hard he scowled at them, many of them deciding stubbornly to re-blur themselves just as he was about to get them pinned down, but he was an optimist, and determined to stay one. He was _most definitely_ getting into the rhythm of it and did enjoy- well, what story he could pick up from it.

He was vaguely aware of the shrill whistle of the kettle boiling, but it might have just been his mind sizzling.

Aziraphale walked back into the room a few minutes later, tea in hand, to an odd but vaguely endearing sight. Crowley was sitting cross-legged on the couch, book open in front of him, nose inches from the page as he traced along with his reading, occasionally stopping to blink in a rather deliberate manner or reread a passage. It made sense, that Stevenson fellow was a verbose one, and not a fan of the full stop.

He resumed his spot in the armchair, sipping his tea and pulling the bookmark from his own novel.

“You seem quite absorbed, are you enjoying it?” Crowley raised his eyebrows and hummed in question, dragging his eyes from the page to meet his, taking a second to focus properly.

“I asked if you liked it, Crowley dear, are you alright?” 

His demon nodded unconvincingly before closing his eyes and turning back to the book, where he reopened them and started to return to his steady reading.

Aziraphale frowned, watching him scowl at the words and trace them with a shaking finger. He could now see that though it was a moderately difficult text, he seemed to be having more trouble with it than he would have expected. And the way his eyes were darting about- _ ah, _ he thought. _ That just might be the issue. _

He stood up rather quickly and hustled over to the Assorted Sciences section, pulling a thin Herpetology book from the shelf, scanning the Table of Contents and flipping to the section titled _ Eyes _. 

“Well,” he said quietly to himself. “That explains a lot.”

“Darling!” He called across the shop, receiving a muffled: “_ Yes angel? _”

“Put that book away, love, unless you want me to read it to you?”

There was a short silence, and he rounded the corner into the back room to find Crowley leaning back against the arm of the chair again, rubbing his hands up and down his face in apparent frustration. He sat across from him on the short couch, (though his legs were facing the correct way, because he knew how to sit in chairs, thank you,) and placed a hand lightly on his knee. Crowley’s head dropped into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, where he buried his face and laid it there in the dark and soft. It was slightly alarming, and a level of physical affection Aziraphale wasn’t quite prepared for, but he wasn’t objecting. Especially seeing how much tension was now releasing its grip on his darling Crowley.

“Oh dear, you really were worked up about this, weren’t you, love? Goodness, you’re shaking! Oh, Crowley…” 

The thin frame was in fact shaking when Aziraphale wrapped his arms around his love in a protective embrace, who responded in kind, face still buried in the soft fabric of his collar. When he spoke, he was mildly surprised at how steady his voice was.

“It’s the words, they won’t quit going all fuzzy on me. What’s the point of a bookshop if the bookss don’t even work properly?”

Aziraphale chuckled despite himself. 

“Darling, the books work just fine, your eyes just aren’t built for reading books!”

Crowley huffed, pulling away.

“Not built for books, or light, or clarity…” the demon trailed off, more vulnerable than he’d seen him in a good while. “What _ were _ they built for, if not just to bloody irritate me?”

“For hunting at night. For seeing ultraviolet light in what would otherwise be a pitch black room, finding what’s moving, and catching it before it knows what’s got it. They were built to belong to a beautiful and terrible predator, Crowley.”

Crowley blinked at him in alarm, then cleared his throat. 

“Where’d you get that then? Poe?”

“No, a herpetology book. Now, I’ll read this to you, then tomorrow we’ll go to the optometrist to see if we can get you fitted for some prescription sunglasses to help those gorgeous peepers focus, alright?”

Crowley nodded and leaned back again, still vaguely off-kilter as he closed his eyes and listened to Aziraphale’s animated storytelling.

About an hour later he bolted upright.

“Wait, _ herpetology? _ You saw my eye problems and turned to _ a snake book _for help!?”


	2. Chapter 2: The World's Much Brighter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley gets some prescription glasses and really appreciates detail and color for the first time.
> 
> Aziraphale gets some ice cream and reveals his special connection to rainbows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a long time coming, but here it goes! Enjoy some soft husbands!

It was eleven in the morning the Tuesday after Aziraphale had spent the night reading to Crowley, and after a good deal of tests, bright lights, strange contraptions, some tingly eye drops, and convincing the doctor that no, those are not fancy contact lenses, Crowley was now walking hand in hand with Aziraphale out of the eye doctor. A pair of roll up disposable sunglasses were strapped to his face beneath his usual sunglasses, and his other hand held an orange sucker that he’d occasionally pop into his mouth or lick at lazily. 

They had an hour before they had to be back to the optometrists office to pick up his prescription, so they decided to just meander around the little shops nearby to kill time. 

“I think that went rather well,” Aziraphale commented yet again on his demon’s appointment. 

“Yeah, s’pose so, I just don’t see what good dropping some tingly stuff in my eyes and then flashing them with a big bright light does to help me.”

He frowned in the general direction of the knickknacks he was perusing and they shuddered. He felt a bit better.

“I think they said it was a photograph of your inner eye, dear. Either way, it _ was _ quite the imposing machine, I can't even begin to imagine how painful that must have been for you.”

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad, angel.” 

Crowley softened a bit and recaptured the hand of his love, kissing it gently.

Aziraphale blushed and tutted.

“Liar.”

Crowley dropped the hand.

“Alright fine, but at least it’s over with, yeah? Anyway, it’s about time we started to head back to pick up my new shades.”

“Via the ice cream stand I hope?”

Crowley sighed.

“Yes, of course via the ice cream stand, you great bauble.”

Aziraphale did try very hard to look offended at that.

“And here you go, Mr. Crowley! Your brand new glasses.” 

The receptionist beamed behind her cat-eye lenses as she slid a small box across the counter containing a glasses case and a pair of sunglasses very similar to his usual ones, but a bit more square at the top.

Crowley swallowed thickly as he stared down at his reflection in the tinted glass.

“Alright then. There they are.”

His fingers gripped the desk like a lifeline.

Aziraphale reached out slowly, and placed a gentle hand on his arm. Crowley turned to face him after a moment, his expression unreadable save for the twitch of the corner of his lips.

“Come on then, love. Put them on.”

Crowley peeled his fingers from the desk and shakily reached up to his old glasses, steeling himself before slowly pulling them from his face and folding them with care, setting them on the desk next to his new ones. Then with eyes tightly closed, he laid a hand on the new glasses and pulled the disposable shades from his face.

His fingers pulled the arms of the glasses open and guided them safely to his face. He took a deep breath…

And he opened his eyes.

And the first thing he saw was the receptionist, beaming at him still. Her hair and glasses… _ red. _ It was so incredibly brilliant, he could barely see anything else. Then he turned his head, and he could _ see. _

He could see the paintings on the wall of flowers… pink, orange, purple, with green leaves. They were intricate. Beautiful. 

He turned some more, and he could see out the window. He could see the sky, the same blue as usual, but the clouds had definition to them. They ended in crisp lines against their bright backdrop. He could see the trees, some brilliantly _ green, _ some _ red _ or _ orange, _with their individual leaves waving in the soft breeze. 

Then he turned again, and he caught a mirror. And oh how brilliant was his _ hair! _So deep and bright at the same time, no wonder Aziraphale loved it so much.

And speak of the devil, behind him in the mirror stood, same as ever, his angel.

He spun back around, and got a good detailed look. His colors were all the same, except for his cheeks and lips, which glowed a rosy pink. He was exactly the same as he always had been. Every detail the exact same as it’d always been. But now it was all so much crisper, so much clearer, as though someone had taken an eraser to the blurred edges of him.

He smiled, and small creases formed in the corner of his eyes.

“Angel, your eyes, they’re… almost _ green, _ and- and they’re all…” Crowley reached out and cupped Aziraphale’s cheek, touching those creases with his thumb. “ _ Smiley _.”

Aziraphale chuckled and mimicked the motion, and the contact broke something in Crowley’s chest.

Suddenly tears were pouring down his cheeks but he was laughing, gripping his angel’s face and drinking in every detail of it as he’d never been able to before.

Aziraphale was crying too, but he was too busy smiling and holding Crowley to notice.

The receptionist cried too. It was always sweet, she thought, when patients got to really see their partners for the first time. 

The whole day after that they went around London on a tour of their old favorite spots[*](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033194/chapters/50986534#chapter_2_endnotes), and Crowley got to see the sights for real this time. And as they made their way back to the bookshop as the sun was setting, a flag waving in a nearby window caught Crowley’s eye.

“Angel, what’s that?”

Aziraphale followed his gaze and smiled.

“Ah, that would be a pride flag, darling.”

“Is it… is that a rainbow?”

“Yes it is.”

There was a pause as they reached the bookshop door, and slipped inside.

“Aren’t you, like… angelically in charge of that lot?”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed, and little creases formed there.

“_ That lot? _”

“Yeah, y’know… the ones who put up those pride flag thingies?”

“You mean the LGBTQ+ community?”

Crowley sighed.

“Yes, that. Aren’t you supposed to be their overseer or something?”

Aziraphale straightened up a bit.

“In fact I am. I am the Principality of the Queer Folk, though some aren’t too keen on that particular phrasing. Why do you ask?”

“Well… don’t you- don’t you think we should have those pride flags, like… everywhere? All the time?”

Aziraphale beamed like he never had before. Or maybe Crowley could just see it better.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Mostly on foot, Crowley wasn’t allowed to operate vehicles just yet, much to his chagrin.

**Author's Note:**

> *It did not in fact take him a long time to select a book, he just grabbed the one with the boldest title and spent a minute deciphering it and deciding whether the text inside was large enough to be worth attempting.


End file.
